Sunday, July 26

The Tribe

Exclusive Area Premiere!

Friday, July 24 – Monday, July 27

(2014) dir Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy w/Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich [131 min; DCP]
Winner of multiple 2014 Cannes Film Festival Awards (including the coveted Critics’ Week Grand Prix), Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s THE TRIBE is an undeniably original and intense feature debut set in the insular world of a Ukrainian high school for the deaf. THE TRIBE unfolds through the non-verbal acting and sign language from a cast of deaf, non-professional actors—with no need for subtitles or voice over—resulting in a unique, never-before-experienced cinematic event that engages the audience on a new sensory level.

Teenage Sergey (Fesenko), a new student at the school, realizes immediately that he must prove himself worthy to be brought under the protective wing of the school gang’s leader to survive unscathed. Sergey’s new-found clique soon introduces him to their common activities of robbery, violence, and prostitution. At first assimilating seamlessly into his new role in the tribe, he finds himself compromised as he begins to fall in love with his female classmate—and one of the gang’s escorts—triggering a sequence of increasingly dire consequences.

“If ‘The Tribe’ were set in the hearing world, its desolation would seem reductive and forced, a pose rather than a statement. Without words, the movie becomes a nihilistic fable and, indeed, something unheard of until now. It’s silent opera.” – Ty Burr, Boston Globe